World Film Locations: Buenos Aires

Description

World Film Locations: Buenos Aires explores this picturesque and passionate city (the second-largest in South America) as a stage for sociopolitical transformations, and a key location in the international imagination as a site of cultural export. The book uncovers the many reasons why Buenos Aires attracts not only tourists but also artists and filmmakers, who explore the city and its iconography as well as its cultural and sociopolitical turbulence. A set of six essays anchors this volume; contributors consider a range of key topics related to the city onscreen, including tango, villas miseria (shantytowns), dictatorship and democracy, and science fiction and the future of the city. The volume is rounded out with in-depth reviews of nearly fifty key films—The Hour of the Furnaces, Nine Queens, and Evita among them—each illustrated by screen shots, current location imagery, and corresponding maps for travelers and movies buffs to use as they navigate this rich cinematic city. 

Maps/Scenes

Scenes 1-8 – 1915–1958

Scenes 9-16 – 1958–1985

Scenes 17-24 – 1985–1997

Scenes 25-32 – 1998–2001

Scenes 33-39 – 2002–2008

Scenes 40-46 – 2008–2013

Essays

Buenos Aires: City of the Imagination – James Scorer

Tango and the City – John King

From Dark to Light: The Cinema of the Transition to Democracy – Constanza Burucúa

Shantytowns: Buenos Aires, the Shattered City – Gonzalo Aguilar

Gender and Class Since the 1980s – Carolina Rocha

The Fantastic and Futuristic City – Joanna Page

Martín Rejtman and Buenos Aires – Martín Rejtman

Sujets

• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film
• ART
• Video

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783203406
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

WORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
BUENOS
AIRES
Edited by Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael PigottWORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
BUENOS
AIRES
Edited by Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael Pigott
First Published in the UK in 2014 by All rights reserved. No part of this
Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, publication may be reproduced, stored
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, First Published in the USA in 2014
mechanical, photocopying, recording, by Intellect Books, The University of
or otherwise, without written consent.
Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA A Catalogue record for this book is
available from the British LibraryCopyright ©2014 Intellect Ltd
World Film Locations Series
Cover photo: White Elephant/
ISSN: 2045-9009
Elefante Blanco (2013) © Morena
eISSN: 2045-9017Films/Matanza Cine/Patagonik
World Film Locations Buenos Aires
Copy Editor: Emma Rhys ISBN: 9-781-78320-358-1
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-340-6
Printed and bound by
Bell & Bain Limited, GlasgowWORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
BUENOS
AIRES
editors
Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael Pigot
series editor & design
Gabriel Solomons
contributors
Gonzalo Aguilar, María Agustina
Bertone, Constanza Burucúa, Javier
Campo, Jack Cortvriend, Andrea
Cuarterolo, Adam Gallimore, Clara
Garavelli, Carlos Giordano, Juan
Grigera, John King, Clara Kriger,
Cara Levey, Adriana Laura Massidda,
Eamon McCarthy, Ramiro Montilla,
Carolina Orlof, Mariana Oyarzabal,
Santiago Oyarzabal, Joanna Page,
Mariano Paz, Michael Pigot, Natália
Pinazza, Paula Porta, Martín Rejtman,
Carolina Rocha, Lucía Rodríguez Riva,
Samanta Mariana Salvatori, James
Scorer, Fernando Sdrigoti, Ana Silva,
Luciana Zorzoli
location photography
Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael Pigot
(unless otherwise credited)
location maps
Greg Orrom Swan
published by
Intellect
The Mill, Parnall Road,
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
T: [phone]
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Bookends: Photo: Oyarzabal and Pigott
This page: Tetro (Kobal)
Overleaf: on set of Rapado (Photo: Martín Rejtman)CONTENTS
Maps/Scenes Essays
10 Scenes 1-8 6 Buenos Aires:
1915 - 1958 City of the Imaginat ion
James Scorer
30 Scenes 9-16
8 Tango and the City1958 - 1985
John King
50 Scenes 17-24 28 From Dark to Light: The
1985 - 1997 Cinema of the Transition
to Democracy
Constanza Burucúa 70 Scenes 25-32
1998 - 2001
48 Shantytowns: Buenos
Aires, the Shatered City
90 Scenes 33-39 Gonzalo Aguilar
2002 - 2008
68 Gender and Class
108 Scenes 40-46 Since the 1980s
2008 - 2013 Carolina Rocha
88 The Fantastic and
Futuristic City
Joanna Page
106 Martín Rejtman
and Buenos Aires
Martín Rejtman
Backpages
124 Resources
125 Contributor Bios
128 Filmography
3World Film Locations | Buenos Airesacknowledgements
The editors wish to acknowledge the
help of the Humanities Research
Centre and the Institute of Advanced
Study at the University of Warwick,
the series editor Gabriel Solomons,
and Adriana Massida, Martín Rejtman,
Gustavo Taretto, Ezio Massa, Julio
Zarza, and Diego Scarpello for help
at various stages of the project. John
King for generosity and persistent
encouragement, the ever-ready PA
Denise, Mariú and Juan, Ale and Marce,
and all of the Oyarzabal family for their
aid and welcome. Mariana Oyarzabal
translated the Spanish texts. We would
also like to give a special thanks to our
contributors for their efforts, insights
and commitment.
santiago oyarzabal
and michael pigott
published by
Intellect
The Mill, Parnall Road,
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
T: [phone]
F: [phone]
E: [e-mail]
World Film Locations Buenos Aires
often praised as ‘the most European of the Latin American cities’, the Reina del
Plata, or Queen of the (Río de la) Plata, Buenos Aires is a city of important contrasts – ofen
more so than its own people, the porteños, wish to acknowledge. It is a city of massive wealth
and of massive poverty, of European culture and indigenous American tradition, a city of
international investment and political division, of Hiltons and shantytowns, a city of rifs,
breaches, overlaps, invisibility and public demonstration.
Both ends of the social spectrum brush shoulders in many districts – even the renewed
Puerto Madero (symbol of the 1990s neoliberal modernization) lies next to a villa miseria
(shantytown). Such juxtapositions symbolize a city that both divides and integrates, that can
maintain blatant wealth diferences, but also integrate poorer, darker-skinned newcomers
into the very heart of the urban landscape. And there is even more to Buenos Aires: beyond
the Riachuelo river and the Av. General Paz – the two boundaries that demarcate the
administrative limits of the CABA (Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, or what used to be
known as the Capital Federal) – is Gran Buenos Aires, the suburban outskirts that extend for
miles in every direction. In this book we have chosen to include flms made both within the
city proper, and amongst its many distinctive suburbs. Both areas are not only essential to the
city’s identity, but the diferences, interactions and ideals that arise from their coexistence are
also intricately intermingled into the everyday life of the city.
Cinematic representations of Buenos Aires during the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries
reveal not only a cosmopolitan city, a ‘city of lights’, but essentially one with deep roots in
both the cultures of multiple waves of immigrants and settlers, and those of the pre-colonial
indigenous population. In many of the flms included in this volume we see specifc urban
locations employed in attempts to think through, and deal with, persistent problems posed
by the ideologies and material consequences of modernization, and the long-lasting efects of
poverty, inequality and exclusion.
Looking now at the collection of scenes and locations selected by our contributors, a
few suggestive patterns are evident. Many of the locations are streets, corners, crossings,
plazas. Buenos Aires is a city lived on the street. Football stadiums, bars, tango, parks and
shantytowns all reveal the city outdoors as a space of socialization, and where passions are
lived. If anything, these locations and themes do conform to stereotypes about the city and the
porteño people. However, perhaps to overturn these stereotypes, there happens to be no scenes
in San Telmo or Recoleta, two of the better known, most touristic attractions of the city.
Buenos Aires is also depicted as a fantastic, slippery, Borgesian location – evinced by its
facility for becoming other cities, such as ‘Aquilea’ in Invasion (1969), ‘Oran’ in Te Plague
(1992), and ‘Darwin City’ in Condor Crux (2000).
Te book itself functions as a place of encounter between the Anglo and the Hispanic/
Latin American academic communities, an exciting blend of flm, urban, literary and cultural
studies scholars, from across oceans. {
Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael Pigot, E ditors
5World Film Locations | Buenos Airess
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Text by
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reBUENOS AIRES w
City of the Imagination
in an apt discovery for one of the Argentine flm-makers, then, have regularly
world’s great modern metropolises, in 2008 an turned to the city as a means of exploring social,
original version of the 1927 flm Metropoli (Fs ritz political and cultural issues. Even in its early years,
Lang) was found in the Museo del Cine in the Argentine cinema put the city on-screen, including
Argentine capital. Te fact that Buenos Aires had the working-class and immigrant neighbourhoods
been sheltering this uncut reel of Fritz Lang’s of the urban south, though it was not until the
groundbreaking dystopian urban masterpiece 1930s that local productions gained ground against
for some eighty years was highly appropriate for US dominance of the flm market. Te introduction
a city that, ever since its rapid expansion and of sound in particular fuelled demand for flms
industrialization at the turn of the twentieth that used both recognizably local forms of Spanish
century, has constantly refashioned its own image and the urban realism of city streets. To some
on the big screen. Like most modern cities, as part degree those same streets were cinematic victims
of that long history of cinematic reimaginings, of the flm policies of the frst Peronist government
Buenos Aires has been variously flmed as a locale (1946–55), when state subsidies, flm quotas and
of promise and of hopes dashed, of revolutionary censorship encouraged a glut of studio dramas that
possibility and political oppression, and of relied predominantly on innocuous interior spaces.
economic liberty and social inequality. It has served But one of the great contributions of Peronism
as a synecdoche for the nation and as a symbol of was to transform Buenos Aires into a socially and
the insuperable breach between the capital and the politically contested space. With debates growing in
Argentine interior (or even its own outskirts). And the 1960s and 1970s about the social role of cinema,
it has functioned as both a fn-de-siècle Paris of the lef-wing flm-makers presented the city not just
southern hemisphere and a truly Latin American as a site of oligarchic values, military repression
megalopolis of the twenty-frst century. Like all and neocolonial cultural imperialism but also as
urban imaginaries, such flmscapes have infuenced one of revolutionary possibility. Film-making and
the way Argentines and foreigners alike think screenings were ofen clandestine, turning urban
through and inhabit Buenos Aires. cinematic production and consumption into a
potentially political act. Te 1976–83 dictatorship
brought an abrupt end to such cinematic activities,
violently clamping down on both the city and its
culture. Even with the return to democracy in the
1980s, flm struggled to recover its earlier vibrancy
and the urban cine